Make a Guitar Scream
You know when you hear bands like Green Day, Bullet for my valentine, Pantera, Killswitch Engage, or Carcass and in solos the guitar gives a really high pitched scream that sounds awesome? Its pretty tricky at first but practice makes perfect! Note: You need to be able to play the guitar reasonably well to do this, not for beginners. You also need an electric guitar (NOT ACOUSTIC) with an amp with distortion/overdrive.This is called a Pinch Harmonic
Steps
- Okay first we'll learn to do a Natural Harmonic. this will familiarize us with the sound of a harmonic.
- Turn on the Distortion. Turn up the Treble and Mid-range. Select the Bridge Pickup on your guitar. Any good sounding Metal-ish Rhythm Sound should work well.
- Using a Left (fretting) hand finger, LIGHTLY touch any string at the 12th fret. Do it DIRECTLY ABOVE THE FRET, NOT Behind it, as you would normally do in fretting a note. Don't press hard enough to MUTE the string, or to fret it normally.
- Pick the Note and Remove your Left hand Finger.
- You should hear a Chime sound that is noticeably different than if you fretted this note normally.
- Do This 10 Times.
- Now for the Pinch Harmonic:
- Observe your Pick technique. there should only be a small amount of pick protruding from your grip. This facilitates Rapid Picking as well as Harmonics. What we're doing here is using our Right Hand Thumb to touch "Pinch" the string, instead of using our fretting hand.
- Using the Right(Picking)Hand thumb, Touch the string in EXACTLY the same place at the 12th fret. Touch with the Fleshy part of your thumb Directly in front of the Pick.
- Pick The String, making a kind of rotating motion. the pick should move, but NOT the Fleshy part of the thumb. this fleshy part takes the place of the Left Hand in a natural harmonic.
- Remove thumb.
- With Practice, you should be able to make the Pinch harmonic sound the same as the Natural harmonic.
- Select a fretted note. I'd recommend the A string at the 7th fret. then try moving the picking hand around and find different harmonics. Start in your normal picking position (Near the bridge).
- Using Vibrato (shaking the note) Helps a great deal.
- if you do this for about 20 minutes every day, in about a week, you WILL be able to do this.
Tips
- Once you find that right technique, if your going to stop playing for a while, hold the pick in the correct position in your hand (while you watch TV or whatever). Your hand will grow familiar with the position. Worked for me.
- Keep trying! It will most likely take more than a day to master this!
- You can practise these on a steel string acoustic, they are much quieter, and if you master them on a steel string, you will be able to do them on an electric like a pro.
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